


Snapshots

by SegaBarrett



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Babies, F/M, Future Fic, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 05:29:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1333831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jesse's life in Alaska.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snapshots

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Breaking Bad, and I make no money from this.
> 
> A/N: Written for a prompt on the Breaking Bad Kink Meme.

Jesse and Brock had only been in Fairbanks a week when he met her.

He’d been walking through Toys ‘R’ Us, trying to figure out what to get Brock for his birthday, when he’d stopped and blinked, momentarily forgetting where he was and then suddenly panicking. The shelves of innocuous toys suddenly seemed sinister, like they were closing in on him, but only for a second.

Then it was all back to normal and he was staring at the concerned face of one of the employees. She was short and thin, with long black hair and brown eyes covered by black wire-rimmed circular glasses, and she seemed to be of Asian descent. Her name tag read ‘Diep’.

“Do you need help finding anything, sir?” she inquired.

“Honestly?” Jesse began. “…Yes. Yes I do.” He blushed. “I… My son is turning nine and I… I don’t know what to get.”

“Well,” Diep replied, “What does he like?”

“Video games,” Jesse replied quickly, “Uh… Little army men. Stuffed animals!” He looked down and shuffled his feet. “Nice things. Nothing violent…”  
Diep nodded. 

“Listen, let me show you what we have.” She led him over to a section of stuffed animals, some with various educational properties.

Ten minutes later, he left with a full cart, and couldn’t help but cast a glance as he was leaving at the woman who had helped him. 

***

Jesse was going to say something. He was going to say something witty and intelligent and something that would really set him apart.

But first he was going to stand over here, behind the Barbie Jeeps for a little while, and try and get his bearings. After Jane, after Andrea, the thought of approaching a girl for anything, even a drink, seemed like bestowing some kind of curse of death on them.

Just the same, he didn’t want to be alone. He wasn’t alone, of course, he had Brock…but Brock was nine. He wanted someone to cuddle up beside, someone to talk to about… where he had been? Maybe just the broad strokes.

Maybe just something.

How far he was going to get, of course, remained to be seen.

Behind him, two of the other employees were having a conversation.

“Did you hear they killed Brian on Family Guy?” one of them, a tall beige-skinned man, asked a girl with short blonde hair. Jesse craned his head in to listen. 

“Shopping around?” 

A voice cut Jesse out of his eavesdropping and he whirled around to see Diep smiling at him.

“Oh, yeah,” Jesse replied, flustered, “I think I might start driving one of these. Lower insurance.”

The woman laughed. 

“Can I help you find anything today?” she inquired. “Or you just want a test-drive?”

Jesse blushed and looked at her.

“….Ah, well… Diep…” He pronounced it DEE-ep. 

She smiled.

“It’s ‘Deep’. Like, ‘wow, man, that’s deep’ or ‘don’t go into that water, it’s too deep.’”

Jesse burst out laughing embarrassedly.

“I… Wow… Sorry. It’s a nice name,” he stammered, “I mean… Sorry… I suck at this. Like… really.” His head darted around a little. “…Hey, did you hear they killed Brian on Family Guy?”

Diep chuckled.

“Yes… Yes I did.”

***

“So, what’s your story?” Diep inquired as they sat across from each other at Starbucks, sipping some drink that Jesse didn’t even remember the full name of. 

“I just got here a few months ago,” was all Jesse could really say, “My son and I. What about you? Are you from around here or…?”

Diep shook her head.

“Chicago. I’m a senior at U of A. Student by day, toy-seller by night…” She laughed. “Or something like that. Maybe a little less dorky than that.” She fiddled with her glasses. “Or, no, exactly that dorky.”

Jesse smiled.

“I like it.”

***

The first time she met Brock, Diep smiled wide and extended her arms.

“So you’re the kid I’ve been hearing all about, huh?” she teased. He rushed up and gave her a hug. Jesse had expected Brock to be more suspicious, now, more reserved. But it was the opposite; he seemed to take affection wherever it came. 

His fears about the two of them getting along fell by the wayside. He had to turn away to wipe his face.

***

They had been dating each other for seven months when Jesse took her to the fanciest restaurant in Fairbanks, Two Rivers Lodge.

His hands were shaking as he reached in his pocket and pulled out the shiny ring, slipped down on one knee and whispered, barely hearing his own voice, “Diep Pham, would you make me the luckiest man alive and marry me?”

She wrapped her arms around him and let out a loud squeak before saying, “Yes! Yes, I will.”

He closed his eyes and promised himself that he wouldn’t screw it up this time. He wouldn’t lose her; not like Jane, not like Andrea.

“You’ll have to meet my parents,” she told him with a big smile. He managed a brave smile but something inside shivered like a shaking tree branch.

***

As it turned out, Diep’s parents were nice people. Older, in their sixties maybe, and they still dressed in what Jesse assumed to be traditional Vietnamese clothing.   
They had pictures from the country hung on each and every wall of their Chicago home, and they broke into foreign speech every few sentences, with Diep shaking her head with a sigh.

“Sorry,” she apologized. “I’ll need to remind them it’s a little rude, actually.”

Jesse shook his head.

“No, I kinda like it actually.”

He promised himself that maybe after a year or so, he’d have picked some up. Enough to use in conversation, at least.

Well, at least the curse words, to understand if someone was trying to start a fight with him. And to know not to actually use those around the wrong people.

At the very least, enough to know what he was ordering if he stopped in a Vietnamese restaurant. That was a realistic enough goal.

***

It was surprisingly sunny for Alaska on the day of their wedding. Jesse had gone along with Diep’s suggestions for a traditional Vietnamese wedding; to be honest, he’d never thought much about it. He had always figured that wedding planning should best be left to whoever he was marrying as he would be likely to invariably mess it up. He figured his mission was mainly to look decent in a tux.

Jesse didn’t invite his family back home; it wasn’t as if he could just look them up and tell them everything that had gone on these past months and see if there was some way they wanted to be a part of all of this. This was going to be a fresh start. A new start. 

Jesse was panting as Diep approached him, dressed in a pink Aio Dai, a traditional silk dress. 

He smiled at her with tears in his eyes and barely heard the words that the minister was speaking. This was the first day of the rest of his life.

The only parts that were clear in his mind were her eyes looking into his and the moment he whispered, “I do.”

***

They stayed in Alaska, but bought a larger house, with a room for Brock and a big den, not to mention a guest room that no one ever stayed in. Given the cold, they spent a lot of time indoors, quickly adopting two cats and a big fluffy dog who was a mutt of some kind and loved to curl up at Jesse’s feet and lick his ankles.

A year went by; Brock was dressing for his first day of the fifth grade when Diep arrived home from her night shift at the hospital to take Jesse aside and told him she needed to talk and right away.

Jesse’s face fell. 

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

His chest was pounding. It had to be bad news; it was always bad news, wasn’t it? It was always bad news when it came to the people he cared about, the people he loved…

“Jesse! You look so worried. It’s okay.” She took his hand in between hers. “It’s something good. I’m pregnant.”

His jaw dropped open.

“You… get out of town! Seriously?” He blinked. “Did I just actually say ‘get out of town’? Do I live in the fifties?” he babbled.

Diep wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight.

“You’re adorable, Jesse,” she told him.

Jesse had to rub at his eyes to keep from crying, and even then he wasn’t that successful. He could feel the tears poking at his eyes. He never thought this would happen. He was also seized with fear – what if something went wrong now? What if something, as it seemed to always do with him, went so very wrong?

***

Jesse’s fears waxed and waned as the next six months went by, even as Diep tried to assure him that she was fine. They went about their days with a kind of urgency, doing up the guest room bit by bit, even as it never seemed to be getting done fast enough.

Jesse stayed up nights painting the place pink when they found out their baby was going to be a girl. He found it kind of fitting – pink for a Pinkman, after all. He was frantic, though; he stepped back to look at the walls and realized that it didn’t seem to be the right shade of pink. It wasn’t right, she wouldn’t like it, somehow it was all wrong.

He slumped down and sat on his crossed legs, starting to sob. Suddenly, he felt the gentle touch of a hand on his shoulder, and when he turned his head, Diep was looking at him.

“Don’t stress yourself out,” she told him gently. “There’s plenty of time for that when she’s sixteen and dating.”

Jesse smiled shyly and laid his head on her shoulder.

“What are we going to do with ourselves, Diep?” he asked.

***

They were in the middle of a game of Monopoly when it happened. Brock was winning, and by a landslide too. He was playing as the dog, while Jesse had the shoe and Diep had the top--hat.

She looked up at Jesse a moment after rolling the die, with a worried look on her face.

“Uh? Jesse? I think we had better get in the car, like right now. I think my water just broke.”

Jesse stood up quick, grabbing Brock’s parka and then his own, helping Diep to her feet and helping her get her own coat over her arms as her hands shook. 

“All right. Here we come.” Jesse tried to stop his heart from pounding, but it wasn’t easy. He barely even remembered how to drive, and all of the cars seemed so much closer than they normally did. It was a blur of red lights in front of him and it seemed like every traffic light was red as well. He wished there was some kind of siren he could put on that declared “My wife is having a baby. Get out of the way!”

Brock, for his part, was in the back seat, rocking a little bit. Jesse wished he had gotten a chance to have a real talk with him about what this meant, to assure him that he wouldn’t love him any less just because there was a new baby in the house, that Brock would always be his first son and he’d always love the kid. He had to hope that Brock knew that anyway, or that if he got worried he would come to Jesse and talk to him, not bury it deep the way that Jesse always had every time that his parents had told him he wasn’t good enough, until it had all come bubbling out as drugs and rebellion and everything else.  
Jesse wondered what his parents would say if he told them he was here. Would they even care, or would they just assume that he was going to ruin his new family?

He couldn’t think about that now, though. He pulled up in the hospital ER parking lot and rushed out, yelling things that did not entirely make sense but somehow succeeded in getting nursing staff running out to the car.

As they carried her in, Jesse was afraid he might collapse. What if it all went wrong, somehow? Didn’t stuff like that happen, and didn’t he have a bad track record with the women he loved and fate? 

Jesse shivered, so nervous he could barely stand. 

“Come with us.” He wasn’t sure who was speaking, but he followed the voice anyway. The voice that was going to bring him to the woman he loved, to the little baby who was going to join their family… if everything went as planned, that was.

Jesse stumbled along, praying that everything went as planned. He needed Diep. He needed this baby. He needed life to change and move in a different direction, to bring him around to a safe place. 

He glided into the hospital room and tried to sit down in a chair. He missed it and instead found himself laying back on the floor.

Diep, from her place on the hospital bed, started laughing.

“Jesse!”

It turned into a groan though.

“Think this baby is coming, and fast,” she gasped out. 

Jesse scooped himself back into something resembling a sitting position and reached out to take her hand in his.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said, and he wasn’t sure if he was telling himself or her. She was Diep-Andrea-Jane, switching before his eyes and fading, fading so fast that he had to cling to her hand to keep them both firmly on the planet. 

“Jesse!” she gasped out, pressing so hard on his hand that Jesse was sure it would break. “I love you – but… God, why did you do this to me? Aghhhhh….”

Jesse’s eyes went wide. He felt as if he couldn’t stop blinking. The fact that women could actually do this, and sometimes more than once, was going to be actively blowing his mind for a very, very long time.

***

All was calm in the hospital room where Diep slept, turned on her side with her arms draped around her pillow, looking peaceful. 

“Would you like to come hold her?” a nurse asked Jesse, and he nodded eagerly, remembering watching Diep holding the baby against her chest before they had whisked the infant off to make sure that she was okay. 

Jesse followed the nurse into the nursery, where rows of tiny little babies with pink and blue hats were all lined up, like a sea of babies. Jesse stood in amazement: this many new little lives all starting around the same time. It was crazy.

“Here’s yours,” the nurse said with a smile. “Baby Girl Pinkman. Did you choose a name yet?”

Jesse shook his head sheepishly. 

“Not yet,” he admitted.

“Hold out your arms.”

Jesse did so, though his arms were shaking as they put the baby into them.

“Support her head,” the nurse said, and Jesse fumbled to do so, looking down into the tiny closed eyes. She was beautiful, so pink and small. He was afraid to breathe in case he somehow dropped her because of it. 

“Hi,” Jesse whispered, leaning in like he was telling a secret. “I’m your Daddy… and I love you, okay? I’ll always love you.”

**The End**


End file.
